Security sources: Weapons smuggling from Egypt into Gaza has ballooned
By Avi Issacharoff, Haaretz Correspondent 17 June 2006
www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/727912.html

[IMRA: If Israel is clueless as to how many tunnels there are then why does
the Shin Bet think it has a handle on what is going through these tunnels?
Why "65 rocket propelled grenade launchers" and not 75? 200?]

Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense
Committee 10 days ago that weapons smuggling from Egypt into the Gaza Strip
has increased greatly since the Israel Defense Forces withdrew on September
12, 2005.

Diskin did not explain that most of the weapons are smuggled into Gaza
through the tunnels at Rafah, just like before the IDF pullout. Palestinian
security sources say smuggling has reached an unprecedented scope because
there is no preventive activity on the Palestinian side.

Contraband materiel has included 11 tons of TNT, 3 million rifle bullets,
some 10,000 rifles, 1,600 guns, 65 rocket propelled grenade launchers, 430
RPG shells and shoulder-launched missiles.

No Egyptian, Palestinian or Israeli official is currently willing to
estimate the number of tunnels operating in the Rafah region, but the
Egyptians report to Israel and the Palestinian Authority on tunnels exposed
nearly every week. Many other tunnels are thought to be operating.

The tunnels do not belong to a particular organization, but rather to
Rafah's major clans, which rent them out to the highest bidder. Young boys
for the most part are employed at very low wages to dig the tunnels. A month
ago a tunnel collapsed, trapping three diggers and killing one of them.

Besides weapons, the tunnels are used to smuggle electrical appliances,
drugs and cigarettes, as well as terrorists wanted in Egypt.